Ireland Social Care Analysis

In this essay I will refer to the present-day provisions of social care services available to children in Ireland. I will refer to the services available: foster care, residential care and detention centres and the origins of these services which include the work houses, the reformatory schools, the industrial schools and the boarding out system. To understand how we have these services today, we must look at where they originated from. Social care practice is hard to define. This has suited agencies and some governments as it helps to keep salaries and career structures vague. (lalor and share An introduction for students in Ireland)

Foster care: foster care in Ireland is defined as taking someone else’s child into your home and taking care
Most children in residential units are there because of family problems. Similarly, to foster care, residential care began in the work houses. In 1858 the numbers of orphaned children in Ireland increased as during the famine many children’s parents emigrated to America or died of starvation. It was established that children had different needs than adults, so industrial schools were set up. According to (PaddyDoyle.com) (ND) industrial schools were established to care for “neglected, orphaned and abandoned children”. These establishments were run by religious orders many being ran by priests or nuns. The government decided to send the children to industrial schools to be educated and taught trades so that when they were old enough they could be sent back in to the community. During this time Ireland was involved in a war against England. So, the government forgot about these institutions and many of them became corrupt and the government didn’t do anything to try fix these issues as they were concentrated on winning the war and forgot about the children in these industrial schools. Nothing changed in these industrial schools until 1970 when the Kennedy Report was published. Which stated that all industrial schools should be closed immediately and that is how residential units that we have now came